Restart theripening clock

摘要

For more than a decade, Washington State University geneticist Amit Dhingra has been trying to figure out the underlying genetics of pear ripening in order to design postharvestproducts that could deliver consistent fruitquality.A series of research projects that began with trying to understand the seemingly unpredictable impacts of 1-MCP (1-methylcyclopropene, which blocks ethylene receptors) on pears and find postharvest products that would deliver consistent fruit quality arenow starting to fit together like the pieces of a puzzle, Dhingra said, withnew tools to spur ripening and a genetic understandingof how and why they work.